My FLGS (Good Games Ballarat) will soon be hosting monthly X-Wing tournaments, as well as a Store Championship, so Sarah decided she wanted a bit of practice with the game. She had a couple of week’s leave, so we were able to get our times to sync up and have a couple of games before the first of the tournaments. Sarah definitely prefers playing the Imperials, and has been experimenting with various versions of lots of TIE Fighters, whilst I’ve been enjoying playing the World Championship build of two X-Wings and two B-Wings.
Our first game saw an easy win to Sarah as I allowed her asteroid placements to completely disrupt my plans. Our second game is the one I’m posting here, as I actually took pictures of it!
You’ve got to admire how the game looks; FFG did a wonderful job of making the miniatures. We’re playing on my game mat which I acquired from Gale Force Nine. It makes it very easy to work out the boundaries of the play area!
Ship #1 on my side is Biggs, who is hanging a little back and drawing fire away from my two Dagger Squadron B-Wings. A Rookie Pilot X-Wing is off to the side, a little too far away from the main group; it really should have been placed with the rest of the swarm. Sarah sent four TIEs my way – Howlrunner being the most scary, but with Backstabber, Dark Curse and a Academy Pilot in there as well. My chief concern was getting as many of them into the firing arcs of my B-Wings as possible, so I hit “go slow” as my Rookie X-Wing turned in to join the fun.
But what was that coming in from the side? Yes, it’s the Dark Lord of the Sith!
The initial wave of fire went really badly for Sarah, with two of her TIE Fighters being blown out of the sky. Biggs and the Rookie Pilot took some hits, but not enough to destroy either of them.
At this point, the choice of manuevers was going to be key. My B-Wings were able to do sharp 1-turns, and did so, hoping to catch the TIEs as they flew in front. This didn’t quite work as planned, and Sarah started colliding with my B-Wings. Biggs ran into the back of my lead B-Wing, and Darth flew by everyone, shaking his head.
Incredibly, Biggs managed to survive another round of fire (with only 1 hull point remaining!) but my own attack rolls were getting worse. With three attacks – about 11 dice in all – able to concentrate fire, I would have hoped for a better result than one point of damage, but Sarah was able to evade what few hits I got. A critical hit on Biggs gave him a stress token – all four of my ships were stressed!
After the traffic jam, it was a relief to get back to a less congested flying pattern, but it did leave a lot of my ships not going in the right direction! I had to move all my ships before Sarah’s by now, and a lot of the moves were “slide forward until you hit the next ship forward”. At least I was getting rid of stress tokens!
Biggs didn’t survive another round, but I was able to shoot down another of Sarah’s TIEs. Darth manoeuvred around and destroyed my other X-Wing, and after a couple more turns, we were down to a TIE Fighter and a TIE Advanced against two B-Wings.
From here, it was down to a game of attrition: Sarah’s horrible attacks against my excellent shields, whilst my good attacks were largely nullified by her agility. The key point came when I started focusing again; the extra accuracy that provided me with was the turning point. I was down to only a point or two of shields on both B-Wings, but I was able to destroy Sarah’s remaining ships.
X-Wing is a really fun game, with a lot of skill (and a fair bit of luck) involved. The next tournament is this Wednesday; with any luck I’ll do well!